These guys harken back to an old rock and roll tradition that was started nearly 30 years ago in England. Throw together some thick guitar riffs, unleash your bassist and let him pour a concrete foundation, and let a singer wail over the top for all he's worth. It worked for Black Sabbath, and later, say, for Pantera, so why not for "Slim"? Built from the revolving door wreckage of the band Skrew, and hailing from Texas, these guys play a straight-ahead, heavy rock brand, free of any alterna-taint that they call Bayou rock.

They aren't straight copies, however. For one thing, unlike Ozzy Osbourne, vocalist/guitarist Robb Lampman doesn't possess an instantly recognizable voice. His vocals aren't bad, as these kinds of bands go,and they do pack plenty of lung and rage power, but if this band gets over the top, it won't be carried by Lampman's voice.

The comparison also fails, and miserably so, when you look at the kind of lyrics Lampman gets to yell on "Slim's" optimistically titled debut "Greatest Hits." Where Sabbath and imitators eschewed the silly love song raunchiness gig (for the most part), somebody in "Slim" got a good dose of the AC/DC /Kiss lyrical mentality. In other words, a few songs with the subtlety quotient turned down to zero, to the point where you wish they'd shut up and let you escape from the mental imagery. Case in point, a song called "Meat Train" - I'll spare you the actual lyrics.

It's not all bad, however, as a bit of the apocalyptic fury of their former Skrew bandmates has rubbed off on these guys. "John 11:35" is a decent rant about cult leaders, and "History," while musically bizarre (a mess of distortion and computer-altered vocals and effects), has an inscrutable line about "the history...that we're buying."

Ignore the lyrics, however, and there's some music which fans of the above mentioned-bands, and others looking for simple, aggressive and, above all, heavy music can enjoy. Drummer Randy Wassermann pretty much knows his role, laying out a pounding, ponderous groove for Lampman to ply his craft over. The surprise in the mix is the work of bassist Chadwick Davis. In these types of bands, the bassist usually exists to help the drummer lay the foundation, but Davis gets to play around, mixing in tasty bass licks. Unfortunately, his lines are often lost in the album's mix - I didn't really notice his work until I listened to the disc through a pair of headphones.

Even with the funky basslines, the song structures on "Greatest Hits" aren't at all complex, and for the most part, neither are the song concepts. "Slim" just wants to hit you hard, get that head banging, and if you're a woman, maybe take you back to the hotel after the show.

Although I can't speak for the woman part, they do the first two well enough.